Southern Section declares 19 Bishop Montgomery football players ineligible
The southern section announced on Friday that it had declared 19 students of transfer to Mgr Montgomery ineligible on the sporting level for two years after an investigation which determined that they had violated CIF’s regulations when they move to the Torrance Catholic school to play football.
The announcement comes after the school pulled his coach, Ed Hodgkiss, canceled the rest of his season after playing a match and announced the resignation of President Patrick Lee following an investigation by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
The South section published the following statement: “On the basis of the survey, self-declaration and conclusions of the Bishop Montgomery secondary school, as well as the own independent review of the CIF-Southern section, the South section determined that several students transferred to Bishop Montgomery High School to play university football for the 2025-2026 school year Bylaws.
“A notification was sent to the administrators of the secondary school in Bishop Montgomery and to the parents / tutors of student-athletes football. [have been/will be] Posted on the CIF-Southern section website in accordance with section practices. The CIF-SOUTHERN section and its staff will not comment on the eligibility for individual sports students. »»
The former coach and several players previously hired a lawyer to investigate the issue.
The southern section had previously announced the ineligibility to five players. After a more in -depth investigation, 19 players are listed as inadmissible on the southern section transfer portal.
Some of these players had to try to transfer to other schools after Mgr Montgomery abandoned university football. They are listed as inadmissible for two years. These players can only call to try to restore their eligibility if they have not violated the CIF 202 regulations, which involves providing false information.
For months in spring and summer, Mgr Montgomery had praised his transfers. The school has scheduled Mater dei power for a League -free match, even if its program was mainly division 10 or 11 in recent years. While transfers have registered, none of the documents was submitted to the southern section until August. This is where the problems started.
This year, the southern section uses AI and possibly the funds available through the CIF state to hire investigators to dismiss the transfers submitted by schools. Previously, when a school approved a change of address verified, it was mainly automatically accepted. There have been other schools determined to have ineligible players, with Long Beach Millikan to lose two games.
This comes after a booster in Narbonne, St. Bernard and Mgr Montgomery, Brett Steigh, received a letter from a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles telling him to “stop and abstain” to help Catholic schools.
Steigh did a podcast to say that he paid parents to transfer their sons to Narbonne in 2024 and that he also helped pay the football lessons in St. Bernard in 2020. The football program was abandoned there in 2021, 2022 and 2023 after the head coach resigned in the middle of an FBI and INS investigation.
